Position Independent Code

Also referred to as PIC. This is compiled code that doesn't use any absolute addresses. For example, instead of an instruction "jump to 0x00A01857" it would use "jump to the current address plus 0x9A63". Same goes for variables, etc. Usually this is not needed because the processor's MMU creates a virtual address space for the binary to run in. On some architectures this is used for shared libraries, some systems without an MMU must use it for all binaries.